I've been reading a lot of editorials, blogs and news spots on Tuesday's election results, like most people, and I keep seeing the same theme repeated:

"Romney's loss was the result of a failure to recognize the major change in the electorate's demographics".

And also, "Demographics trumps the economy".

What I've read indicates that no incumbent president has ever won re-election with conditions such as we have now. Following the historical example, Romney's victory should have been assured.

Some notable comments:

Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s entry into the Republican nomination race, he rushed to Perry’s right regarding immigration, attacking the Dream Act. He would go on to talk about forcing illegal immigrants into “self-deportation.” It is surprising that only about 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Romney.

Romney’s melancholy but useful role has been to refute those determinists who insist that economic conditions are almost always decisive. Americans are earning less and worth less than they were four years ago; average household income is down $3,800; under the 11 presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush, unemployment was 8 percent or more for a total of 39 months but was above that for 43 Obama months. Yet voters preferred the president who presided over this to a Republican who, more than any candidate since the Great Depression, made his economic expertise his presidential credential.

Republicans can take some solace from the popular vote. But unless they respond to accelerating demographic changes — and Obama, by pressing immigration reform, can give Republicans a reef on which they can wreck themselves — the 58th presidential election may be like the 57th, only more so.

This was the first year Hispanics voted in double-digits, as a percentage of the total electorate.

If indeed Puerto Rico is to become the next state, the Republicans had better re-align their strategies. The good news is that Puerto Rico is loaded with conservatives who, if engaged quickly and positively, would create a nice new voter base for the Republican Party... before the Democrats send armies to the new state to put them all on the freebies dole and make the place a ghetto like they've done with their plantation politics and black Americans.

I'm all over the place here, in a bit of rush to post before I have to run off to work, but I thought this was fascinating and wanted to comment.

The Republican Party definitely needs to lose some of the old ideas and come up with some new ones. As someone said in another thread, the Democrats have successfully co-opted a lot of Republican ideas (the Affordable Care Act, their stance on immigration, the bailouts) and the Republicans, to compete, have moved farther to the right. The Democrats moving to the right made the Republicans move farther right. Not a good position to be in.

Some media pundits see in the growing proportion of non-white groups in the population a growing opposition to the Republican Party that will sooner or later make it virtually impossible for Republicans to win presidential elections or even to control either house of Congress. But is demography destiny?

Conventional wisdom in the Republican establishment is that what the GOP needs to do, in order to win black votes or Hispanic votes, is to craft policies specifically targeting these groups. In other words, Republicans need to become more like Democrats.

Whether in a racial context or in other contexts, the supposed need for Republicans to become more like Democrats has long been a recurring theme of the moderate Republican establishment, going back more than half a century.

Yet the most successful Republican presidential candidate during that long period was a man who went completely counter to that conventional wisdom-- namely, Ronald Reagan, who won back to back landslide election victories.

Meanwhile, moderate Republican presidential candidate after moderate Republican presidential candidate has gone down to defeat, even against Democratic presidential candidates who were unpopular (Harry Truman), previously unknown (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) or who had a terrible economic track record (Barack Obama).

None of this seems to have caused any second thoughts in the Republican establishment. So long as that remains the case, demography may indeed be destiny-- and that destiny could be Democratic administrations as far out as the eye can see.

If non-white voters can only be gotten by pandering to them with goodies earmarked for them, then Republicans are doomed, even if they choose to go that route. Why should anyone who wants racially earmarked goodies vote for Republicans, when the Democrats already have a track record of delivering such goodies?

An alternative way to make inroads into the overwhelming majority of minority votes for Democrats would be for the Republicans to articulate a coherent case for their principles and the benefits that those principles offer to all Americans.

But the Republicans' greatest failure has been precisely their chronic failure to spell out their principles-- and the track record of those principles-- to either white or non-white voters.

Very few people know, for example, that the gap between black and white incomes narrowed during the Reagan administration and widened during the Obama administration. This was not because of Republican policies designed specifically for blacks, but because free market policies create an economy in which all people can improve their economic situation.

Conversely, few policies have had such a devastating effect on the job opportunities of minority youths as minimum wage laws, which are usually pushed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. But these facts do not "speak for themselves." Somebody has to cite the facts and take the trouble to show why unemployment among minority youths skyrocketed when minimum wage increases priced them out of jobs.

The loss of income from an entry-level job is only part of the loss sustained by minority young people. Work experience at even an entry-level job is a valuable asset, as a stepping stone to progressively higher level jobs. Moreover, nobody gains from having a huge number of idle youths hanging out on the streets, least of all minority communities.

Labor unions push minimum wage laws to insulate their members from the competition of younger workers, and Democratic politicians are heavily dependent on union support. For the same reason, Democrats have to go along with teachers' unions that treat schools as places to guarantee their members jobs, rather than to provide the quality education so much needed to rise out of poverty.

What Democrats cannot say under these conditions is what Republicans are free to say-- even if Republicans have seldom taken advantage of that freedom to make inroads into minority voting blocs. Inroads are all they need. If the black vote for Democrats falls to 70 percent, the Democrats are in deep trouble.

But if Republicans continue inarticulate, then it is they who are in big trouble. More important, so is the country.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's what worried my fiancé and her friends the most. The commentary was that the republican party is anti woman. The GOP has a massive image problem with everyone but white men. Maybe next election they should try and work on that.

Matt Taibbi wrote:Similarly, the fact that so many Republicans this week think that all Hispanics care about is amnesty, all women want is abortions (and lots of them) and all teenagers want is to sit on their couches and smoke tons of weed legally, that tells you everything you need to know about the hopeless, anachronistic cluelessness of the modern Republican Party. A lot of these people, believe it or not, would respond positively, or at least with genuine curiosity, to the traditional conservative message of self-reliance and fiscal responsibility.

But modern Republicans will never be able to spread that message effectively, because they have so much of their own collective identity wrapped up in the belief that they're surrounded by free-loading, job-averse parasites who not only want to smoke weed and have recreational abortions all day long, but want hardworking white Christians like them to pay the tab. Their whole belief system, which is really an endless effort at congratulating themselves for how hard they work compared to everyone else (by the way, the average "illegal," as Rush calls them, does more real work in 24 hours than people like Rush and me do in a year), is inherently insulting to everyone outside the tent – and you can't win votes when you're calling people lazy, stoned moochers.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's what worried my fiancé and her friends the most. The commentary was that the republican party is anti woman. The GOP has a massive image problem with everyone but white men. Maybe next election they should try and work on that.

I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's what worried my fiancé and her friends the most. The commentary was that the republican party is anti woman. The GOP has a massive image problem with everyone but white men. Maybe next election they should try and work on that.

I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

I'm guessing that the motives behind the actions aren't a comfort to them.

kentington wrote:I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

I'm guessing that the motives behind the actions aren't a comfort to them.

What do you mean by that? The motives behind abortions or behind preventing them?

Preventing them. If someone views preventing abortions as an invasion of privacy then the motives of those trying to do that aren't viewed as very important.

Oh ok. I understand your point and I agree that they wouldn't care.

My comment was in regards to BvP. From his statement, I thought he was saying that people in the GOP are anti-abortion because they don't like women. If that is the case, then he is dealing with motive, which is why I brought it up.

kentington wrote:I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

I'm guessing that the motives behind the actions aren't a comfort to them.

What do you mean by that? The motives behind abortions or behind preventing them?

Preventing them. If someone views preventing abortions as an invasion of privacy then the motives of those trying to do that aren't viewed as very important.

Oh ok. I understand your point and I agree that they wouldn't care.

My comment was in regards to BvP. From his statement, I thought he was saying that people in the GOP are anti-abortion because they don't like women. If that is the case, then he is dealing with motive, which is why I brought it up.

Ah, right, I hadn't quite gotten your point. Yeah, I'd hope that it's a minority of people that actually view those that disagree with them as straw men...but honestly I'm not sure.

It is hard to tell what view points actually lay in the minority/majority whenever the media gets involved. At least it is hard for me to figure. I live in an area where people just repeat what they see on TV. You can tell who watches Fox and who watches MSNBC. I rarely meet someone who seems to come up with their own conclusions.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's what worried my fiancé and her friends the most. The commentary was that the republican party is anti woman. The GOP has a massive image problem with everyone but white men. Maybe next election they should try and work on that.

I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

no. It also isin't my Fiance view. Their opinion as I understood it, was that the GOP's position with regards to abortion and women's rights are effectively negative and against the interests of women. Making the GOP anti- women.

Now I don't think GOP planers are sitting around saying "how can we f*ck women over?" however the policies they promote and those they opposed suggest they don't hold their interrest close to heart.

throw in legitimate rape comments and it certainly doesn't help their image.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's what worried my fiancé and her friends the most. The commentary was that the republican party is anti woman. The GOP has a massive image problem with everyone but white men. Maybe next election they should try and work on that.

I am curious. Do you believe that the main goal of anti-abortion is because they hate women? Not the fact that they believe it is unjust killing?

no. It also isin't my Fiance view. Their opinion as I understood it, was that the GOP's position with regards to abortion and women's rights are effectively negative and against the interests of women. Making the GOP anti- women.

Now I don't think GOP planers are sitting around saying "how can we f*ck women over?" however the policies they promote and those they opposed suggest they don't hold their interrest close to heart.

throw in legitimate rape comments and it certainly doesn't help their image.

Ha, fair enough. I didn't see you as the type to jump on that bandwagon, which is why I asked.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's pretty ignorant to say that Obama voters are deluded. The Republican base is, has been, and will likely always forever be the "less thinking" demographic. The problem isn't that the voters aren't getting the Romney message, the problem was that with today's mediums, they got the message loud and clear. If I have the choice between the lesser of two evils, I'm going to go with the Reagan evil instead of the Rand evil.

whitestazn88 wrote:I think the idea of Roe V Wade being overturned was also a pretty big factor, outside of racial demography.

Roe vs Wade? Really? Demagoguery for simpletons. Another example of the mass ignorance Obama banked on to win (successfully). Meaning of course you're probably right. How sad is that?

It's pretty ignorant to say that Obama voters are deluded. The Republican base is, has been, and will likely always forever be the "less thinking" demographic. The problem isn't that the voters aren't getting the Romney message, the problem was that with today's mediums, they got the message loud and clear. If I have the choice between the lesser of two evils, I'm going to go with the Reagan evil instead of the Rand evil.

It seems the only people not getting the message are those totally gay white men. On the heels of that new poll, we learn that Obama offered to cut spending on everything sacred, including veteran's healthcare funding. Yet the Republicans must have felt he was showing weakness, because they still couldn't reach a deal. They're paying for it all now, because this is the biggest disparity in the numbers that I've ever seen. 53% doesn't sound like much, but after this bitter partisan election, I think it's a pretty significant proportion.